Communication Architecture Affects Gender Differences in Negotiation

Women tend to face worse outcomes than men in negotiations, and this may partially explain the observed gender wage gap. Most prior work documenting the gender earnings gap in negotiations has focused on settings in which negotiations were conducted face-to-face. Given the prevalence of alternative methods of communication such as chat, phone calls, and video calls in the workplace, we examine the extent of the gender earnings gap in virtual settings where negotiation is required. Using incentivized experiments, we test how the architecture of virtual communication affects the presence and extent of gender differences in negotiation outcomes. When the architecture reveals gender (i.e., through image or voice), women earn 5.3% less than men. However, when the architecture obscures gender (i.e., in fully anonymous chat), there is no gender earnings gap, yet this outcome occurs at an efficiency loss